No matter what age it's built in (bronze, middle, modern or crystal) the Shining City is awesome, perhaps the best city to live in anywhere on the world. The Shining City is usually purpose built from the word "Go", not a disorderly Mega City that grew out of a settlement over hundreds of years. From the air, neat geometric patterns will be visible (not just grids, but circles, triangles, or fantastic symbols that create powerful Geometric Magic), and on the ground each and every building integrates seamlessly into a greater overall style. Above all, the Shining City is bright. On approach, expect it to be shown with lots and lots of artful shafts of sunlight that gleam off the simple yet elegant white buildings; at night it will shine like a neon angel. It will have lots of soaring towers, and citizens of the Shining City never suffer from acrophobia.

Not surprisingly, the bad guys want to destroy or conquer it. Reasons can be simple ambition or Slobs Versus Snobs brand jealousy, this one is common when the bad guys operate out of the Shining City's antithesis, the City Noir. Depending on the story, it may survive intact, get random but repairable property damage, or be doomed to burn like Troy. For extra fun, the bad guys' forces will be represented as an evil dark cloud on the horizon, threatening to both literally and figuratively darken the Shining City. Boiled down to basics, it's the urban equivalent of having a villain say "I Have You Now, My Pretty!" to a city.

In Saint Beast, Zeus' shrine has a white-and-gold neo-classical aesthetic and sits on top of a giant plateau which is only accessible by an extremely long, steep staircase, setting it off from the surrounding scenery.

Comic Books

Asgard in Marvel's The Mighty Thor if often referred to as the Shining City or Golden Realm. This is usually accompanied by a number of grandiose claims like being the jewel of the nine worlds. Artistic portrayals usually have it be a city that is or looks like it is made of gold or a glowing, highly advanced city.

Metropolis in Superman is frequently portrayed like this, especially in contrast to the Wretched HiveCity Noir that Batman lives in. Ironically, while Superman has a lot to do with the average Metropolitan's attitude, what makes it look like a Shining City is Lexcorp's advanced technology.

Fanfiction

The Elysium version of the Smurf Village that appears in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Smurfing In Heaven" is a village made entirely of gold. Unfortunately, Empath discovers that this is a magical illusion created by Ares the god of war.

Films — Animated

Syracuse in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas; filled with gleaming white, gold domed buildings and spires, built upon and among impossibly high Ghibli Hills, which are all connected by elegant walkways. There is even an elevated canal for ships, linking the seas with the Royal Palace. Its a shame that we only see it for a few minutes of the movie though.

Films — Live-Action

Argos in Clash of the Titans is an interesting example, in that while it should be the Shining City, the god's plagues and Calibos have dragged the citizenry down into despair.

Al Pacino's eulogy-speech in City Hall is as much about New York City as it is about the dead victim, and speaks of the shining city New York once was and might be again.

In The Lord of the Rings, Minas Tirith (lit. 'tower of The Guard') is the setting's Shining City (even though the outer wall, Othram, was depicted as black in the book). Minas Ithil (lit. 'tower of the Moon') was her sister and also a Shining City... until the Ringwraiths turned it into the Wretched Hive of pure evil known as Minas Morgul (tower of Sorcery). Both were originally glorified guard-posts for Gondor's original capital, the Shining Shining City of Osgiliath on the Anduin river. The Gondorian Civil War, Great Plague, and finally a sacking by an army of the first Uruk-Hai put an end to that status. Founding the new capital away from Osgiliath and the border with Mordor was unthinkable because it felt too much like admitting defeat, so the city of Minas Anor (City of the Sun) was renamed and put to that purpose.

Minas Morgul does still emit light, but it's a "a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing."

The Silmarillion has the Hidden City of Gondolin, the last free nation of the Ņoldor in Middle-Earth and the fairest city ever constructed by the Elves in exile. Naturally, Morgoth gets it in the end.

The Hobbit also has the Lonely Mountain and its underground Dwarf kingdom of Erebor, which lies next to the adjacent and allied Northmen city of Dale. Both of these northern cities are easily as impressive as Minas Tirith.

Though not a city, the Ivory Tower in The NeverEnding Story qualifies on counts of being the Childlike Empress' home... and really shiny!

David Eddings loves this trope. In The Belgariad, there's the city of Kell; the prequels to The Belgariad describe beautiful Vo Wacune, which doubled as a Doomed Hometown for Polgara. In the same country is the capital of Arendia, Vo Mimbre, whose walls are sheathed in gold. Mandorallen gives a speech about it similar to the page quote, calling it the "Queen of the World"; and The Elenium has "Fire-domed Matherion", the capital of a continent-wide empire.

Matherion is an exaggeration to the point of parody: the entire city is sheathed in mother-of-pearl, giving it a breathtaking iridescent gleam. But, the cost of the shells is such that the empire goes into a mild recession every time a storm hits the city.

The Codex Alera series has the capital city, Alera, for which the country is named.

By contrast, in the Conqueror books by the same author, both Yenking and Otrar are described in terms normally applicable to this trope; however, since the protagonist of these books is Genghis Khan, the readers follow those attempting to destroy them.

The city of Tar Valon in the Wheel of Time series, which surrounds the White Tower and is surrounded by the Shining Walls. All the buildings were built ahead of time by master stonemasons in pretty shapes reminiscent of waves and seashells and such, and the White Tower in the middle is housing for the powerful Aes Sedai, an order of magic-users with great political influence. Also fits the snobbishness bit, since the Aes Sedai are rather arrogant.

Most Ogierbuilt cities count as well, though the most prominent ones are the aforementioned Tar Valon and Caemlyn. Cairhien would be an example, but it's had an unfortunate tendency to be repeatedly pillaged in the books' recent history.

Edmond Hamilton rather goes in for these. The capital of the Mid-Galactic Empire is especially memorable being built of glass upon shining silica cliffs above a silver sea. With a hot white sun like Canopus overhead the citizenry must have to wear shades.

Capitol in The Hunger Games certainly looks the part, even though its actually a Wretched Hive filled with decadent hedonists who take from the poor Districts without giving anything back and expect annual entertainment in the form of the eponymous games (i.e. gladiatorial battles to the death). The film makes it look even more spectacular, a sharp contrast to the poverty-stricken District 12.

The Discworld's Ankh-Morpork is a very deliberate subversion of the thousands-of-years-old Shining City. It's been around for thousands of years, sure. It has citadels and towers and walls and palaces. But it shows its age and more importantly the lack of good flush plumbing and sewers, something Tolkien paid little attention to. The river is an open sewer that walks rather than flows, the streets are paved with...something..., the Tower of Art is a twisted wreck with bits falling off; the city walls are decrepit, covered in graffiti, and falling down, and its most unique claim to fame is its smell. Even Orcs would find their nasal equipment closing down in self-preservation.

In the science fiction novel Nation of the Third Eye by K.K. Savage, there is a shining astral city located literally on the sun's surface. It is populated by highly evolved beings and changes shape all the time.

Live Action TV

This fits the level of love that the cast of Memphis Beat seems to have for their eponymous hometown, although protagonist Dwight Hendricks seems to be almost religious in his reverence.

Most Earth cities in Star Trek are like this. The one we see most often, San Francisco (Star Fleet HQ), certainly qualifies.

The capitals of friendly worlds like Trill and Bajor are usually shown like this, too. More antagonistic or troublesome capitals, like those on Romulus and Cardassia, still manage to look impressive and imposing.

In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Muse", a poet in an alien Bronze Age society writes a play from the logs of a crashed shuttle, referring to this trope in the final words of his play.

KELIS: And Voyager will continue on her journey to the gleaming cities of Earth where peace reigns, and hatred has no home.

The astronomically huge New Jerusalem, described in the biblicalBook of Revelation, is a visionary Shining City frequently identified with Heaven itself. It has walls and streets of gold, foundations of gemstones, and twelve gates, each one carved of a single monstrous pearl. (Yes, THOSE "pearly gates." The oysters are left to your imagination.) Trees of Life, like the one forbidden to Adam and Eve when they were expelled from Eden, here line the streets, and a river of Water of Life springs from the foot of Christ's throne. The whole thing is cubical in shape and roughly as large, on a side, as the distance from Old Jerusalem to Rome. It specifically contains no temple because it doesn't need one, considering Who lives there.

Exalted: Yu-Shan, the seat of power of Unconquered Sun and the Five Maidens. The center of Celestial Bureaucracy runs by the myriad gods of Creation. The headquarter of the Sidereal Exalted. It's basically the Capitol of Creation itself, with the usual intrigues. Its Shadowland is Malfeas the Demon City (a city that's also an individual), which used to rule it as its God-king.

Yu-Shan does also have areas of urban sprawl (typically the enormous slums populated by destitute gods whose domains have been lost or rendered largely irrelevant, or who have otherwise fallen from grace).

The city of Mera, capital of the Old Realm, also qualifies. The Imperial City is its closest counterpart during the Second Age.

The 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons provides Hestavar, a city on the Astral Sea where Pelor, Ioun, and Erathis (god of Sun, Knowledge, and Civilization, respectively) resides. It's also the afterlife for the followers of those gods. And it does have its share of intrigue.

The city-plane of Axis in Pathfinder is a megalopolis bigger than most material planets. It is the archetype on which all civilization is modeled and the physical embodiment of the Lawful Neutral alignment. Like Hestavar, it is the home of several gods, including Abadar, the god of civilization, and the deceased Aroden, god of humans. Its builders and main inhabitants, the axiomites, are living mathematical concepts who pushed back the primal chaos of the Maelstrom and practically invented culture. It does have a seedy underside, though—the sewer-realm of Norgorber, the god of thieves and secrets.

Warhammer 40,000 provides a fair few of these, although, being the sort of setting it is, virtually all have since fallen, decayed or hide terrible secrets. Examples include the City of Seers on Prospero (razed by the Space Wolves); Eldar Craftworlds (home to the last remnants of a race so decadent it created the God(dess?) of Sensual Excess); many Shrine Worlds of the Imperium, most notably Holy Terra itself, although all of those have sizable Wretched Hive slum zones, often underground; the Tau worlds; and many of the cities in the Realm of Ultramar (apart from areas on Calth and Macragge which are still rebuilding from the last wars fought on them).

The Word Bearers Legion used to build grand temple-cities on the worlds they conquered in the name of the Emperor. After the Horus Heresy, those were almost all destroyed by Imperial loyalists. The Word Bearers still raise grand temple-cities, but they no longer fit this trope, being dedicated to the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and usually made of blackened wrought iron and obsidian. And covered in Evil Spikes of Evil.

In Infernum, the Ninth Circle of Hell is Pandemonium, the capital of the Infernum, a symbol of all of demonkind's hopes and dreams, and the prize for whoever unites Hell under his claw. From the perspective of anyone else, of course, it's the Ninth Circle of Hell, an impossible maze of streets between the palaces of the First Fallen, ringed by a river of black ice.

Nos Astra on Illium and Milgrom on Bekenstein in Mass Effect 2 are these for the asari and humans respectively, but in typical BioWare fashion they have dark undersides as well.

Based on the Prothean ruins, one can assume that their cities were like this as well. Of course, as revealed in the third game, they weren't nearly as glorious and enlightened as Liara had always assumed, forging an interstellar Empire out of subject races and forcing them to adopt their doctrine.

Skyrim's Solitude. Capital of Skyrim, visible for miles from atop the rock arch it's built on, and full of grand Imperial towers and manor houses.

Whiterun qualifies as well. Its a well kept, clean Nordic city. It is home to the largest castle in Skyrim (Dragonsreach) and has a very bright White Pinewood on Yellow Roof theme and can be seen from pretty much anywhere on the map if you get high enough.

This is largely the goal of city-building games, with you as its king/major/god/whatnot:

Ancient Egypt: Pharaoh and its expansion Cleopatra; its Spiritual SuccessorChildren of the Nile.

Ancient Greece: Zeus and its expansion Poseidon, the latter of which actually focuses on you building cities on Atlantis!

World of Warcraft: Dalaran fits this trope closely, and while Shattrath doesn't fit the architectural aspects, the big beam of light emanating from the center of it is very shiny indeed.

What remains of Silvermoon City

Guild Wars 2 has one for each playable race. The capital of Kryta for the humans, Divinity's Reach is essentially a positively massive fairy tale castle that never stopped growing, the Charr have the Black Citadel, which can best be described as a steampunk EPCOT, the Norn have Hoelbrak Lodge, the Sylvari have the Pale Tree, dominated by the light of what can only be described as their goddess, and the Asura have Rata-Sum, a massive, floating cube filled with technological and magical wonders.

Anor Londo, the City of the Gods in Dark Souls, apart from being abandoned, seem to fit this perfectly. It's a subversion - the shining part is an illusion created by Gwyndolin, and can be dispelled by "killing" the illusion of his sister Gwynevere. The sun will then dissapear from the city, leaving it in a creepy darkness which really lets you feel it's a Ghost Town.

The self-styled city of Utopia in The Chronicles of Utopia Volume II is this in spades. The city is made from white stone and its main defensive wall contains a massive interconnected network of defensive and divine warding schemes to keep out its enemies. The city itself is ruled by an immortal golden dragon and is considered a center of learning and enlightened thought.

The American concept of building a City on a Hill, an American utopia based on Christian principles to serve as an example to the rest of the world. It's a reference to the Sermon on the Mount: "Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do [men] light a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."

That analysis reflects more how Ronald Reagan redefined John Winthrop's original usage. When Winthrop said that, he meant to remind his followers that their stated aims meant that they would be under greater scrutiny from the rest of the world, that their mistakes would be as visible as their successes.

If any actual city comes close to this, it's Dubai, at least as it appears in this half-hour video of a ride along the city's mostly elevated metro system through three of its major built-up areas, in gold-tinged late-afternoon sunlight, with an ambient-music soundtrack. It's somehow reassuring that there's at least one place on Earth where the 21st century actually does look the way all those older movies and TV shows (at least the ones that weren't set in a post-nuclear holocaust world) imagined it would. (And it does, indeed, look like Blade Runnerat night)

Washington, DC was built as one of these, what with the Neoclassical architecture realized in bright white stone, the rational grid of streets, and so on, to house the enlightened, rational government. Unfortunately, it was built in the middle of a disease-ridden swamp, many of the buildings in early DC were ramshackle huts, and that government became the site of corruption and sectional acrimony within the space of a generation.

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